Consulting Approach to Home Performance Contracting

After attending a building science seminar put on by Wisconsin's Focus on Energy program, Mark Furst's eyes were opened to the importance of energy efficiency, and his career as a home inspector took a radical turn.

After starting my own home inspection business in 2001, I began to realize just how important energy efficiency was to the average homeowner. I also became increasingly focused on coupling my home inspection career with energy evaluation. But while I had the ambition to take risks and learn more about efficiency, I wasn’t confident enough to enter the field just yet. It was all well and good to realize that efficiency was important to both home inspector and homeowner, but I was at a loss as to how to proceed.
It seemed fated, then, that I happened to come across Focus on Energy at the 2005 Better Buildings, Better Business conference in Wisconsin Dells. I was there to further my knowledge of buildings and construction, but I did not have a clear goal. That changed after I attended a building science seminar led by Dave Kinyon of Focus on Energy. My eyes were opened to aspects of houses and their systems that I had been aware of before, but not well versed in. Immediately after the seminar, I inquired as to how to involve myself in the program. Mr. Kinyon informed me that training was held annually, and I readily ...